EVENTS

He is over the

Ben Radford has been exposed to some straw feminists, and he wants us to know he’s over them.

I am over the male bashing often inherent in feminist writings and slogans; “All men are rapists” is neither true nor fair nor helpful.

“Often inherent in feminist writings and slogans”? What does that even mean? He must mean “inherent in many feminist writings and slogans.” But then what does he mean “inherent”? That’s a very odd word to choose. It’s not “inherent” in anything; it’s either put in by the writer or it’s not. Maybe he means “inherently illiberal” or something like that. It’s a pity he’s not more inherently careful when writing.

And then, he’s right about the silly slogan he quotes, but is that a claim you see a lot? It’s a claim I see never, except from people who just hate feminism, period. He presents it as if it’s a commonplace, but…it isn’t. Not even close.

I am over the wanton slinging of labels like “misogynist” and “sexist” and “sister hater” and “gender traitor” and “rape apologist” to people who dare criticize feminists.

What “wanton slinging”? And notice the list, cited as if they’re all on a level. Notice that the last three are nouns for people but the first two can be adjectives as well as nouns. Notice that calling a claim or a remark “sexist” is not the same thing as calling the person who makes the remark a sexist. Notice the generality; notice that we can’t be sure what people he has in mind; notice the sloppy lazy angry…well, wanton slinging.

I am over social activists, including those whose causes I support, who value emotion and anecdote over truth, facts, and critical thinking.

Uh huh. Like for instance?

I’m beginning to get the picture though. He’s really mad at some people – some people he thinks of as feminists, or feminisssssssts, to be specific – and he’s having a good old rage about them, but he can’t be bothered to be specific, so he just froths generally. That’s truth, facts and critical thinking as opposed to emotion and anecdote, I guess. Good that he values truth over emotion.

I am over thin-skinned “feminists” who blithely and intentionally confuse legitimate questions and criticism of their facts or claims with misogyny and sexism; it is insulting to real victims of misogyny and sexism.

Who are these people? Are they the horribly large and menacing women he dreams about every night?

I can do this. I am over lazy feminist-haters who blithely and intentionally pile up straw feminist after straw feminist without even a stab at trying to back up what they’re claiming. Only I’ll go Radford one better: I have an example in mind: it’s Ben Radford.

I am over blaming TV, movies, magazines, and video games for real-life violence-including violence against women. Just as sexy clothes do not cause rape, violent and sexual images do not cause rape; rapists cause rape.

Wo, I did not know that. I totally thought violent images could actually rape people. I’ve been so confused.

Ok, I’m finished. What’s his problem? Has the whole pink toys blowup festered in his mind that long and that deeply? Did a feminist eat all the ice cream that one time? Does he have a toothache?

Comments

Amidst that fuzziness it’s interesting to note the inclusion of one particular label that has been debunked time and time again here at FTB (and previously at ur-B&W), and which was mutually agreed by the people who’d inadvertently used it as representing splash damage owing to bad associations with a similar, racist term; basically they repudiated having used it, and resolved not to use it in future. To the extent that Ben Radford thinks this turn is common currency at the moment, I think it much more likely he’s been listening to the habitual liars again.

What’s his problem? Has the whole pink toys blowup festered in his mind that long and that deeply? Did a feminist eat all the ice cream that one time? Does he have a toothache?

Whatevs. But what an unargued and sloppy outburst.

This just made my night.

The only skepticism Ben’s competent at is the cryptozoology/haunted houses kind. He’d have to be willing to admit there are things he doesn’t know and do some listening and learning to get up to speed on feminist issues. Perhaps he resents the fact that he’s not The Expert In All The Skeptical Things.

and the thing is, the One Billion Rising thing is eminently criticizable, but dude instead decides to blow up at length about all his grievances with (straw)feminists instead of actually addressing problems with the idea of “dancing until the violence ends” as meaningful activism

I am over Ben Radford authoritatively writing about gender issues when he continuously fails at doing so. This blog is an insult to women and feminists. He could learn a thing or two by coming to our Women in Secularism 2 conference. Please stick to chasing Chupacabra, Ben.

“All men are rapists?” Well, that’s a new one. I’ve gotten used to MRAs and other assholes pulling out Andrea Dworkin quotes that are wildly out of context (or just made up) and then holding them up as an example of what All Feminists Everywhere Agree With. So “feminists think all sex is rape” yeah, that’s old news. Totally wrong (even Dworkin didn’t say that), but at least I know where the thought comes from. This? I really didn’t feel up to reading his whole rant so I didn’t click over, but did he give any examples or justification? Any idea at all why he thinks “all men are rapists” is mainstream feminst ideology, now?

(Ugh, this is going to be Thing now, isn’t it. Along with the “Feminists are irrational misandrists because they believe all sex is rape and they believe there are no differences between men and women and they think that boys should be forced to play with dolls and girls should only get trucks and if a guy opens a door you should kick him in the balls” I’m gonna be forced to start explaining (patiently, compassionately, calmly) that, no, we don’t believe that All Men Are Rapists, honest.)

A lot of people deliberately misunderstand that. And some will argue that they know that they are not rapists and therefore, it is insulting to even think that they might be. The arguments are extremely self centered.

I think part of the problem comes from the polite language, “straw man” he didn’t make a strawman argument (or well he did but that is not all he did) He lied he made shit up pretended he had facts when he doesn’t. He is a liar plain and simple. At least to me when someone says that’s a strawman it feels like “Oh you made a mistake in your argument”, an honest thing, something I did carelessly. It is not careless, it is deliberate because they have nothing else.

Same thing happened at neurologica tonight (a nice big feminist bash fest there tonight) they make unsubstantiated claims and people politely tell them “oh your attacking a strawman” When you quote people as saying things that they never said or deliberately take them out of context to alter the meaning of what was said, you are a liar not someone who is simply bad at making a logical argument.

IIRC “All men are rapists” is a line from the novel The Women’s Room by Marilyn French, published in 1977. Yes, a novel. From 36 years ago. A very good and important novel, I happen to think but … a novel and the line is said by a fictional character. The fact Radford has apparently never questioned the source or context or meaning of the line is not very commendable from a skeptic and tends to raise a red flag about how deeply he has researched any of the topic.

It’s SO HARD not to be a man-hater when they keep doing such hateful shit. I’ve been a feminist for more than forty years and the hardest part about it is struggling not to hate men. (Don’t even start with “not all men are hateful” because I know that. I’m even married to a perfectly nonhateful man.)

Over and over, the same lame arguments, the same shopworn insults. (The threats are mostly new though, brought to us by the wonder of the Internet.) It does get tiresome.

Well. Maybe I should apologize. Obviously, he’s got a much wider knowledge base than I gave him credit for. His knoweldge of obscure second wave feminist fiction is very impressive. My bad.

edithkeeler (love the name, btw!) @17: Would you recommend the book? I think I read another Marilyn French book (The War on Women? Something like that? I can’t remember.) I don’t think I finished it, because it was a) pretty out of date and b) really depressing, like page after page of horrible statistics, studies, and stories about sexism and oppression…but without wider analysis or suggestions for change. Maybe if I had stuck with the book that would have come later, but like I said, it was so depressing I just hit a wall and couldn’t keep going. I didn’t know that she wrote fiction. You think it’s worth reading?

@18: I’m very grateful that I have such wonderful guys in my family. I have several brothers and a very loving dad, and even though they sometimes drive me nuts with the delightful combination of ignorance, privilege, and wilful blindness, they also are genuinely good guys who do try and are learning. It’s the same reason I’m glad my father is a cop, actually, glad that I practically grew up at the police station and know so many other officers…with the social justice groups I work with, the blogs and magazines I read, it would be really easy to hate cops or believe that all (or even most) cops are sadistic, power-hungry, racist thugs. But because I’ve seen what a lot of departments are like from the inside, because I’ve known so many police officers, I know that there are bad (and/or lazy, stupid, corrupt) cops like there are in any job, except the consequences for a bad cop are pretty dire (kind of like the consequences if you have a bad nurse). I’ve met cops that did choose the career out of a desire for power (or even just to hurt people), but many more who put their lives on the line every day because they genuinely want to make the world a better place. So. Sorry for the ramble. Just, I understand what you’re saying, when you see the worst of a group of people it’s easy sometimes to not see the wider picture, so I’m grateful for the people in my life that keep me grounded.

Why dance-instead of, say, volunteer at a local domestic violence shelter or meet with lawmakers to increase penalties for physical and sexual assault?

This is little more than whining “why don’t you do activism the way I want to do it?” In this case it was because Ensler’s activism was aimed at stopping rape happening.

There is nothing wrong with helping abuse shelters, there is nothing wrong with trying to repair the damage, but there is also nothing particularly visible about it.

I am over the simplistic idea that women are raped by heteronormative, hegemonic patriarchies instead of by criminals.

I live in South Africa, out here we have ‘corrective rape’. What that means is that in South Africa there are men who specifically target lesbians to ‘correct’ their homosexuality. That sounds pretty much like rape by heteronormative, hegemonic patriarchy to me.

Further your whole idea of ‘criminals’ – yeah we don’t live in Duckburg where criminals are easily recognised by their raccoon masks.

We live in the real world where there is no outward sign as to whether someone is or isn’t a criminal, and fairly often rapes are committed by people familiar to the victims, not some weirdo on the side of the street wearing a sign pointing ‘Here is a rapist’.

The whole ‘rape is committed by criminals’ schtick is just another way of victim blaming because ‘didn’t you know he was a criminal?’

And funny thing here, your examples of societies “worse than us” are essentially highly patriarchal ones. So what is it, do you want feminists to tackle patriarchy when it comes to rape or not?

I thought he was going to shoot his foot with his trigger warning stuff, although this post was just talking about how to design a sceptical analysis of trigger warnings he cited bluharmony’s piece as a “skeptical look” at them. Which was a little bit of a red flag… Especially given sections like this in it

File this one away with Patriarchy “theory,” male privilege, mansplainin’, and a torrent of other logically-untenable, self-serving feminist nonsense that I want no part of.

So he picked up his straw feminism from a good source I’d say, and by a strange co-incidence one that is vociferously on his side for “witch hunts” like the pink is for girls one.

Oh and +1 for everyone pointing out how much more useful the “slacktivism” he criticises is than his “I’m over it” overture to privilege.

You know, it’s getting to the point that I’m almost afraid to check in on any of the middle-aged white-guy skeptics that I follow? It’s like Skeptical Invasion of the Body Snatchers and, every week or so, another one of “us” starts screeching and pointing clawed fingers at feminists.

Wow. It’s hard to believe someone read: “Women are not pyschic and therefore cannot know for sure if someone they meet will try to rape them” and somehow got: “FEMINISTS SAY ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS!!!1!”

Pay attention. This has been a variant of the most common response to any mention of patriarchy or privilege the last couple of years. Even more common? “the Schrodinger’s Rapist piece is accusing me personally of being a rapist! Me me me me me! I am offended!”

I don’t get the “I’m over X” formulation used here. To me, it means “X happened (or is happening) and there’s nothing I can do to change that,” like how being “over” an ex-girlfriend means acknowledging that there will be no getting back together.

Clearly Ensler didn’t mean that with regard to rape, because she wouldn’t then go on to issue a call to action regarding the very things she’s “over.”

Because everybody knows that the real victim here is apathy. Poor, abused apathy. Shaken to its very core by awareness campaigns and politically rallying. Why can’t people just recognise that this is life and death, all or nothing, absolute or inconsequential?

If societal and cultural orthodoxy cannot be overturned by a single, magical gesture, then why bother at all? By speaking out about this, people (innocent people) like Ben Radford are forced to make themselves part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. But people like Ben Radford should just be left alone to sit on their arse and do nothing, and whilst they do nothing, the people with the real responsibility to stop this, the police will put it all right. Just as they always have done, catching criminals, litterers, shoplifters, drivers with broken parking lights, and rapists.

And Ben Radford will gladly climb over a pile of women’s bodies a hundred deep armed with nothing more than the sword of semantic quibbling and the shield of flimsy, unsupported verbiage in order to defend his right to only ever risk gambling if he knows he’ll win. No matter how many of his brave infantry of scare-quote punctuation marks must be thrown against this hoard of consciousness-raising, barbarian Feminist-types, Ben Radford will overcome.

Whilst the Feminists exhaust their efforts and expend that finite supply of moral courage and decent outrage, Ben Radford will be quietly winning the against rape, violence, and discrimination. Ladies, he will do this with nothing more than clumsy paeans putting nameless, countless victims firmly in their place.

Anyway, given that the initiative has had a giant success, with demonstrations in several countries, with NGOs like Amnesty International involved etc., I don’t know that this guy’s problems with it are a severe cause for concern. So he thinks the money would be better spent elsewhere. That’s great. He can spend it elsewhere. This always happens with every public initiative. Jon Stewart got flak for his rally, people said it did nothing and blah blah and they have a right to say it but so what? Everybody can go to the organizer and inform themselves about the point, the arguments and the results. It’s not like they’re using your money after all. I say do your thing, help in whatever way you like, and let results be the judge. Nobody loses.

I need an education here. Besides Radford obviously coming from a privileged position and burning down straw opponents, is there a difference between his piece and Ensler’s original?

You can’t simply ask that we consider “Besides…” Radford’s rant is cold, vitriolic, and sounds like nothing so much as call to do precisely nothing. It seems like an attack, not a parodic critique, and the target appears victims and their advocates.

Ensler seems to be “over” being part of a victimised minority which plays a type role within rape culture, I would say of having to pick up the pieces after the fact.

Radford seems to be “over” having to hear about it without careful dissemblance of statistics in order to salami-slice the problem into insignificance, and is apparently particularly “over” all of those Feminists who do nothing more than consistently highlight the role of rape culture in violence against women instead of blaming criminal, rapist bogeymen.

I don’t get the “I’m over X” formulation used here. To me, it means “X happened (or is happening) and there’s nothing I can do to change that,” like how being “over” an ex-girlfriend means acknowledging that there will be no getting back together.

There’s another emerging usage which means something like “I’ve had it with X” or “I’ve had more than I am willing to take of X and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

So, Ensler is not going to accept rape as a commonplace feature of life anymore. And Radford, apparently, has suffered all he’s going to suffer at the hands of feminists and he’s not going to take it anymore! At least, that’s my reading.

Addendum: A very close friend of mine was and still kind of is involved in the Occupy movement, in Boston. Having read about things that she and friends of hers went through, I am extremely disinclined to give cops the benefit of the doubt anymore. And the LAPD’s performance in the last few weeks was merely icing on that cake.

Nobody who considers themselves progressive should be automatically giving cops the benefit of the doubt. They exist to enforce society’s power structures.

Well I guess if Radford is over rape that means it isn’t happening any more. Who knew it was that easy, that someone could just be over a thing and it would cease to be. Let me try it. “I am over poverty!”

Good news, people. Poverty is now solved, no more work to be done. Anyone who complains about issues related to their own poverty from this point forward is just a professional victim.

At least he admits that rape happens and that is bad. A glimmer of light in a chasm of pseudoskeptical gah. I know, I know, my standards for what qualifies as glimmers of light are low, so low..

I’m having a hard time understanding why he seems to think you can either do hands-on activism directly with the person/group/thing you are working for OOOOOOOOOOOOOORRR you can do an awareness campaign. But you can’t do both!

I am over people who don’t understand there are different types of activism and we participate where our skills are best utilized.

Or at least from a twisted reading of some of the comments. Due to the extreme and horrific nature of the subject of the original post some of the comments were made by people who were obviously very upset and angry with men in general.

No, notsont. “All men are potential rapists” was put up and labelled as a provocation to see what other wonders of self-delusion a very determined arsehole would come up with in his Holy Quest to misunderstand the subject and derail the thread.

In other words it was there as a rhetorical ploy rather than a statement of fact. The “potential” modifies it, too.

There’s a commenter over in Radford’s thread comparing feminism to McCarthyism: “Try to make a point or raise an objection and you’re slammed with name-calling”. Hint, dear commenter: McCarthyism wasn’t “name-calling”.

More unintentional hilarity: the commenter mis-spelled “McCarthyism” as “McCathyism”. Perhaps the commenter’s secret fear is of legions of feminist oppressors in leg warmers, drinking diet soda and shopping– ACK!

‘I am over thin-skinned “feminists” who blithely and intentionally confuse legitimate questions and criticism of their facts or claims with misogyny and sexism’

He’s got you there, hasn’t he? You seem, the job lot of you, incapable of legitimate disagreement, incapable of adult debate, incapable of listening, incapable of responding constructively. Anyone who opposes you is an apologist for whatever you profess to rage against. You prove this again and again. Go on, I dare you, just one of you, to say that a person might have legitimate reasons or motivations for taking issue with Ensler’s latest. That you might disagree, but that this could be done without impugning the integrity of your debating opponent.

Ah, the vomitworthy, glorious sight of a ‘skeptic’ screaming at ‘semantic quibbling’ and howling ‘think of the children’. I fouled myself with pleasure and disgust at the sight of another ‘skeptic’ opining ‘the hardest thing is not hating [does it matter what demographic group gets filled in here? yes to this mob, it does]’.

Just be honest, why don’t you? Drop the ‘skepticism’ label. It never suited you. Go for ‘anger’, ‘shouting’, ‘moral panic’, ‘identity politics’, ‘everyone has to agree’, ‘opponents are scum’, ‘those who disagree with us support rape’, ‘we feel anxious and need something to rally around, and something to hate’.

But whatever you do, never allow that another civilised adult might have legitimate reasons for questioning Eva Ensler’s statistics. For the worst crime imaginable would be to acknowledge such, to suggest that anyone who disagrees with you is anything other than an apologist for rape.

Ok. Ensler’s idea leaves me cold too. If Radford’s post had stopped with that, I would have had no issue with it. But Radford made a great many more sweeping generalizations after he was finished with Ensler, and I took issue with many of those. Not all of them, but many of them.

You blatted out quite a few sweeping generalizations yourself, you know.

And what’s all this “skeptic” shit? I don’t use the label “skeptic” so there’s no need for me to drop it. I don’t think I’ve ever called myself a skeptic much, and I’ve never called myself that primarily. These days, with so many skeptics making a last stand on the barricades to battle a straw version of feminism, I avoid the label as I would avoid a rabid squirrel. So don’t worry about it. You can have the ‘skepticism’ label all to yourself; I don’t want it.

What’s funny about the skeptic label is that when you come a philosophy background, being a skeptic isn’t just about being skeptical over religious and supernatural claims. It about being skeptical about claims of the existence of an external, mind independent world and/or whether we can have knowledge about anything. In my graduate seminar on Contemporary Skepticism this semester, we talking about people like Shermer, Harris, Dawkins, or Randi but about people Brian Rebeiro, Hilary Putnam, and Barry Stroud as well as older folks like Descartes, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell. If you want to be a a true skeptic ™ then you should be skeptical of the external world, cause and effect, and all sources of knowledge. Otherwise you just aren’t being skeptical enough.

He’s got you there, hasn’t he? You seem, the job lot of you, incapable of legitimate disagreement, incapable of adult debate, incapable of listening, incapable of responding constructively. Anyone who opposes you is an apologist for whatever you profess to rage against.

There can be legitimate disagreements over social justice issues. We saw those in the early gay rights movement. The “Clean for Gene” (damn, I’m showing my age) gays argued with the “out, loud and proud” gays about how gays should present themselves to straights. But most of Radford’s disagreements with feminism aren’t legitimate. Nobody, not even Andrea Dworkin, claimed that all men are rapists. Many of the people who bash feminism actually are misogynist sexists and using those labels for them is justified. It is even possible to dance to support feminism and talk to legislators about feminist issues (these don’t have to be done simultaneously).

Just about every time I see someone disagreeing with feminism the disagreements are either “feminists are threatening male privilege” or protesting straw-feminism. Radford’s complaints fall into the second group. His grievances aren’t about feminism as practiced by feminists but about a counterfeit feminism concocted by sexist naggers who can’t find real disagreements with feminism.

If you want to be a a true skeptic ™ then you should be skeptical of the external world, cause and effect, and all sources of knowledge. Otherwise you just aren’t being skeptical enough.

I think too many skeptics stop short in their skepticism because they fail to question the internal, actually. Like dylanringwood from last August who brought up his bullshit detector because he was very concerned with false reports of rape. We impair our ability to successfully divest ourselves of false ideas if we never turn skepticism on the tools of our skepticism, such as checking the default settings on our “bullshit detectors” for bias. If we’re like dylanringwood, this failure to be self-critical means we end up placing as much (or more) doubt on anecdotes about rape as we do someone’s claim that “the government is using microwave weapons to give them headaches.”

If anything, it seems skepticism about a mind-independent external world is something instinctual for us. For instance, everyone doubts that the external world can shape us in ways we do not consciously allow. Meanwhile, even if there’s no actual mind-independent external world, the illusion of one is so consistent we (or I, since, in this case, you all are figments of my imagination) can treat it as if it exists. So maybe what we should be worrying about is whether we can have external-world-independent minds.

Looks like a legitimate disagreement with a constructive response. I assume that this falsifies the “job lot of you” claim, and since Ophelia plainly responded to you as well, it seems that you can’t even suggest that this is just about her, either.

A skeptic would think things out, investigate, and check sources, not simply look for a means to confirm their own bias. Most importantly, they admit that they are wrong when it is shown that they are wrong.

Ah, the vomitworthy, glorious sight of a ‘skeptic’ screaming at ‘semantic quibbling’ and howling ‘think of the children’.

Well I wrote, and literally did not scream, the phrase semantic quibbling. Nor did I metaphorically scream it either. Radford does indeed quibble over semantics in his effort to dissemble the statistics, not least of all in compiling his list of abuses.

I certainly didn’t ask, suggest, and definitely did not howl, think of the children.

You seem, the job lot of you, incapable of legitimate disagreement, incapable of adult debate, incapable of listening, incapable of responding constructively… That you might disagree, but that this could be done without impugning the integrity of your debating opponent.

And you seem to incapable of following your own advice.

Mine was the angriest rant here, I think. Would you like to pretend that everyone here is like me? I wonder why?

If you chose to focus only on my hyperbole, it is because you chose to ignore many other calmer, more carefully explained arguments. Such dishonesty.

“That isn’t a strawman argument. That’s full on bullshit. He’s not illogical or confused, he’s a fucking liar.”

Absolutely. I am so over of hearing the same lies and nasty stereotypes about feminists that I’ve heard my whole life, and SO over thin-skinned men who blithely and intentionally confuse legitimate issues women face with “male-bashing” and McCarthyism.